


[fic & podfic] all the world's a stage

by sophiegaladheon, Wereflamingo



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Anxiety, Athletes, Audio Format: MP3, Audio Format: Streaming, Background Relationships, Canon Compliant, Competition, Gen, Heavy Background Music, It's Not Background, Minor Katsuki Yuuri/Victor Nikiforov, Music, Plain Version Also Available, Podfic, Podfic Length: 10-20 Minutes, Post-Canon, Pre-Canon, That's a lie, They're About Equal, World Figure Skating Championships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-29
Updated: 2019-08-29
Packaged: 2020-07-10 07:16:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,268
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19901869
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sophiegaladheon/pseuds/sophiegaladheon, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Wereflamingo/pseuds/Wereflamingo
Summary: When he steps out onto the ice, it feels like the quietest of homecomings.Three World Championships in Yuuri's career.





	[fic & podfic] all the world's a stage

**Author's Note:**

> Created as part of the 2019 Pod_Together challenge!  
> Written by sophiegaladheon  
> Podficced by Wereflamingo  
> Cover art by Wereflamingo
> 
> Title from Shakespeare's _As You Like It_
> 
> Thanks to the challenge mods for being awesome and to Paraka for hosting!
> 
> This is kind of more than a podfic really, so I would recommend you try the full version and read along even if background music is not usually your thing, because it's not really background and you'd be missing a lot. But it is quite demanding, which is not for every one and for every occasion, so a plain podfic version is available too.

[Full version](http://pod-together.parakaproductions.com/2019/all%20the%20world's%20a%20stage.mp3) | **Size:** 18.1 MB | **Duration:** 00:19:58

[Plain version](https://drive.google.com/file/d/1cGUlK1m6JS4-9eiCoqwSsfxIGjFn-5h2/view?usp=sharing) | **Size:** 13.6 MB | **Duration:** 00:15:11

**_Romeo and Juliet, Dance of the Knights_ \- Turin, Italy (2010)**

Yuuri’s name is announced over the loudspeaker, the pronunciation only slightly mangled, first in Italian and then in English. With one final squeeze of his hands from Minako-sensei, he skates out to take his place in the center of the rink. As he folds himself into the starting pose of his free program, Minako-sensei’s final encouragements echo in his mind.

_You are in eighth place. You have done well so far, you can be proud of yourself. This is your final performance of your senior debut season. Go out and show them what you are capable of._

The music starts with a blast, and he jolts into action with a gasp, instinct and training taking over where his conscious mind failed. He knows he isn’t doing Minako-sensei’s beautiful choreography justice as he slides through his opening steps on pure adrenaline, but everything is moving too fast to process, too fast to correct—he has to keep going, can only do his best to keep up.

The landing on his first jump is a wobbly mess, but he keeps himself upright. The crowd is a roar in his ears. Their cries are loud, a mass of sound surrounding him, blending with the brass and strings of his program music in a tapestry that only amplifies the intensity of the score alone, but whether they are cries of encouragement or condemnation, Yuuri can’t say.

He throws himself harder into the dance, the story. When Minako-sensei first suggested this piece, he hadn’t been sure he would be able to pull it off. Forbidden love and tragedy were, after all, somewhat more serious and adult themes than he usually took on. She insisted it was a good choice for a senior debut, and an Olympic year. And she had, of course, been proven right. With her help and choreography, he had been able to tap into the balletic origins of the music and use that to his advantage on the ice. More than one commentator had noted his expressiveness and emotive interpretation of the piece.

But not today.

Today there is haste where there should be patience, frenzy where there should be calm. He falls on a jump combination, the ice scraping bloody scratches into his palms. He picks himself up, because he has to.

The music continues on. The transition to the slower, more delicate portion of the piece is usually Yuuri’s favorite. After the bombastic introduction, the quieter middle measures let him show off the expression for which he is already well known. But today he is behind; the music, even at its slower pace, is still rushing ahead of him, and it’s all he can do to scramble after it.

His choreography feels awkward and expressionless, and he can feel the knot in his stomach growing as he pops a triple salchow into a double. The program seems interminable, but he knows it is nearing the end. 

The approach of his final jump, a triple axel, races towards him. A big jump, and his most difficult. If he can land it, it will be a solid conclusion to the routine.

He’s almost holding his breath as he takes off, even though he knows he shouldn't. Then his training takes over, and there’s a minute of blankness before he’s back on the ice, the landing clean and precise. Transitioning into a y-spiral gives him just enough time for his inner-Minako-sensei to chime in with a reminder. _Chin up, shoulders back, finish strong._

Yuuri isn’t sure that a strong finish will help anything now, but he does his best regardless. 

As he transitions out of his final combination spin and into his final pose, the sounds of the stadium come rushing back into the forefront of his attention. The cheering, which he must have blocked out at some point during his program, is now so loud as to be overwhelming, and it washes over him as he slumps out of his pose, exhausted.

With as much of a smile as he can manage for the cameras, he salutes the crowd and the judges, thankful for how little he can see without his glasses. As he skates towards the gate, he can just make out the figure of Minako-sensei, holding his jacket and guards in her arms. She’s clapping.

Yuuri can’t help but think once more of her words. Show them what you are capable of. He may not yet know his score, but he is certain he failed on that count. 

**_Stammi vicino, non te ne andare_ \- Hasetsu, Japan (2015)**

There’s a part of him that knows that he couldn’t have stayed in the inn and watched Worlds with Minako-sensei. The sense of failure is too close, too sharp, and seeing the competition in Saitama on the television—when he couldn’t manage to earn himself a place there—burns like a coal in the pit of his stomach.

The familiar features of the Ice Castle are soothing, a nostalgic call back to when the pressures and expectations on his skating were lesser, if not nonexistent. Yuuko, too, is a comforting presence. Her cheerful positivity and upbeat enthusiasm do not agitate his anxious mind in a way that the platitudes of so many others have rankled during these last few painful months. There is no place he would rather be right now, when he is trying to escape the crushing weight of his failure, and yet at the same time desperately trying to reconnect to what he loves about his sport.

When he steps out onto the ice, it feels like the quietest of homecomings. All the hundreds of hours spent practicing in this space seem to echo around him. His first steps in rental skates with Mari and his parents when he was very small. Playing and racing with Yuuko and Takeshi after school. Long lessons spent with Minako-sensei and his coaches standing by the boards, as he grew more certain of his competitive goals. Countless hours spent by himself in the quiet of the early mornings before classes, or late at night to ease his anxiety and help him sleep. The ghosts of shouts and laughter and instructions and the hiss of blades cutting across the ice all ringing in his ears.

The sound of Vicchan’s excited bark, from when Yuuri would sometimes bring him to sit and watch on the bleachers during practice. Yuuko had told him that Mari would still sometimes bring him around and the triplets would play with him, letting him slip and roll on the ice when the rink was closed. The videos she sent still make Yuuri smile, even when they also make him cry.

There’s a high-pitched giggle somewhere in the distance as Yuuri draws to a halt in the center of the rink. He draws a deep breath, focuses, and takes the opening pose.

The music isn’t playing over the rink’s sound system, but he’s heard the track enough times that it doesn’t matter. He’s watched Viktor’s performances so many times that he has every measure and note memorized. All of Viktor’s programs are breathtaking, works of art etched over ice, and he has seen them all over and over. But this one especially, with its lonely voice calling out, the longing etched into every gesture and turn and jump, speaks to him in a way he can’t articulate in words. Even in the muffled quiet of the Ice Castle, the only sounds being those of his own blades and his labored breath and his pulse rushing in his ears, he can imagine the strains of Viktor’s song.

It isn’t an easy routine to skate; of course it isn’t, it’s Viktor’s, and Viktor has won championships and broken records with it. Viktor Nikiforov does not skate simple or easy programs. But Yuuri has spent the last four months with nothing to do but finish his schoolwork and contemplate his failures, and he threw himself into studying the minutiae of this program like a drowning man after a life preserver. And as he skates this, his favorite program by his favorite skater, a piece that speaks so loudly and clearly of a desperation and longing that wells convergently from Yuuri’s own soul, and does it here, in a place that always meant safety and solace and dedication-well-rewarded, he finds that the grace and the expression, the fluidity and the connection that have been so out of reach with his skating since Sochi, since Vicchan, are back easily within his grasp.

It’s not a perfect program, not by a long shot. Even as he draws to a halt, to the immediate uproarious cheers and applause from Yuuko, the part of his mind that is always picking apart the flaws and imperfections of his skating has already started up its critique. And even in his rational mind, Yuuri knows it’s right. But right now, for once in his life, he doesn’t care. 

A perfect program wasn’t the point. He wanted to skate for himself, and for someone he trusts, who has supported him since the beginning. To share something that brought him joy. And he got that. And it was good. 

**_Yuri on Ice_ \- Boston, USA (2016)**

It’s strange, being back in the United States, and stranger still being back at worlds. Boston is quite different from Detroit, of course, but it’s an American city, and American cities all have a uniquely American feel to them, the same way Japanese cities feel Japanese in a way that he can’t quite describe (and how, he suspects, Russian cities probably have a particularly Russian feel that he will learn to recognize soon enough.)

He left Detroit at his lowest point, at what he had almost convinced himself was the end of his career. And now he’s back, in Boston, the whole city decked in signs and banners welcoming skaters and fans to the World Championships, with Viktor at his side, freshly earned National and Four Continents titles bolstering his name, ready to make his bid for the podium.

Yuuri doesn’t mention these thoughts to Viktor. Because it’s Viktor, who sat out half the season before coming back and competing with just as much skill and fire. The same astonishing ability as before, if not more. Viktor, who has never been anything but kind and supportive, and a whole-heartedly enthusiastic believer in Yuuri and Yuuri’s skating. Yuuri does not want to mention how close he came to giving up, to quitting, to going home to Hasetsu and never leaving again. 

But, as the crowd cheers for Otabek and Viktor takes Yuuri’s jacket as he prepares to step out on the ice, Yuuri lets the anxious, disconcerted feeling roll through him and settle, focusing on the weight of his breath in his lungs and Viktor’s palm in his hand. He is here, he has made it once more, and for maybe the first time in his career, he is meeting Viktor on the ice as an equal.

The announcer calls his name and he leaves Viktor with a kiss to take his place in the center of the rink. It is exhilarating that he has come this far. There’s the faintest echo of a smile on his face as his head dips and the music begins, and he soars. 

The crowd cheers, they’ve been cheering since he was announced, and it buoys him, their enthusiasm catching, mingling with his own joy, and he feeds the delight back into his performance. It’s incredible, how much more often he has been able to hear the crowd as supportive this season, when before it was more commonly a distraction, or a source of anxiety. It still is, sometimes, but he’s gotten better at filtering it out and substituting in Viktor’s encouraging voice if he needs to.

He doesn’t need to today.

He flows through his program like water, the music cascading around him in perfect harmony. The thoughts of his flaws, of all the ways he can fall and fail, are silent. It is all an ebullient rush of joy and grace and love, burning muscles and perfect control combining into an expression of overwhelming happiness.

He lands the final quad flip and can hear Viktor’s joyous whoop. There’s a grin spreading across his face even before the music draws to a close, and the cheers of the crowd wash over him as he takes his bows. Viktor’s are the loudest, and Yuuri beams widely as he skates towards his coach and fiancé.

Something soft and small and brown lands on the ice by his feet as he skates by, and he swerves to pick it up. Up close, he can see it’s a tiny stuffed poodle, small enough to fit in his cupped hands. Yuuri grins and waves at the crowd in the direction it came from, before stepping into Viktor’s arms.

They sit together in the kiss and cry, Viktor’s arm wrapped around Yuuri’s shoulders, and wait for the scores. The crowds are still cheering at the re-play, the sweepers are still cleaning up the flowers from the ice. The world is loud and joyous and chaotic, and all Yuuri can hear is Viktor’s voice as he leans in, breath dusting over his ear, and says, “you were brilliant, solnyshko.” 

And as the announcer asks the judges for the score, Yuuri knows that somehow, by some miracle, he’s ended up right where he wants to be.

**Author's Note:**

> Sophie, thank you so much for writing this amazing fic that not only gave me great emotional depth to work with, but also allowed me to play with pacing and music in a way I never knew before. Making it was a joy and an experience.
> 
> **Credits:**
> 
>   * Skating sound effects are taken from [these](https://www.instagram.com/p/BpMLuZ9HVKe/) [two](https://www.instagram.com/p/Bvgpy2KAvRv/?hl=en) videos by On Ice Perspectives. Check out the rest of his videos too, they're all incredible!
>   * Most of the applause is taken from actual competition footage by various major broadcasters, but there's a also a bit from [this](https://freesound.org/people/wangzhuokun/sounds/459556/).
>   * Other sound effects: [breathing](https://freesound.org/people/ceberation/sounds/235519/), [heartbeat](https://freesound.org/people/loudernoises/sounds/332807/), [giggle](https://freesound.org/people/SoundMunger/sounds/62263/), [barking](https://freesound.org/people/noctaro/sounds/242414/), [ice rink ambience](https://freesound.org/people/EskimoNeil/sounds/404379/). 
>   * Music: You know where Stammi Vicino and Yuri on Ice are from, of course. The performance of Dance of the Knights used is by the Boston Symphony Orchestra and Seiji Ozawa.
>   * Photo used in cover art is by [Nicola Bikar](https://unsplash.com/photos/BTxwgNaEwHc).
> 



End file.
